News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-11-17
IN THE AFRICAN JUNGLES
THEY PREFER DEATH TO
SLAVERY.
A Big African Tribe that Shut Them
selves Up on their Mountains.

| Every now and then some missionary
or explorer in Africa reports the dis.
| covery of some interesting tribe that has
never been heard of before. Though
Africa has now been overrun in all direc-
| tions, there are extensive regions be-
tween the tracks of travellers that are
still unknown, and remarkable informa-
ton often awards the first white man
| who visits them. Father Josset q
| Catholic missionary who lives west of
Lake Tanganyika has just sent home an
| account of an interesting people of whom
Livingstone, Cameron, Stanley, Thom-
son and other travellers never heard,
| though they all, doubtless, saw the
| mountain on which this tribe have made
their home.
The Wa-Bembe, Father Josset saws.
| inhabit chain of mountains some dis
tance west of the great Lake Tanganyi-
ka. The country around them has for
| many years been Overrun by Arab slavers
and ivory dealers, but the Wa-Bembe
have never met them. 1t has been their
deliberate purpose to avoid all contact
with the Mohammedan element, and this
difficult policy has been successfully car
ried out.
Dividing their tribes into clans these
mountaineers have built their villages
upon the loftiest and most precipitous
part of the chain of mountains they in
habit. They sternly forbid all strangers
from climbing their SUBMITS. When
they have become well acquainted with
individuals of their tribes they permit
their visits, but they allow no party of
men to ascend their mountain, and they
Will have nothing to do with natives
whom they suspect of holding relations
with the Arabs or with the Waugwanas,
tribe that have been converted to
Islamism. They devote themselves to
the culture of the soil, and their mount
aims are the granary of the northwest
coast of the lake.
Sometimes they descend into the plain
to exchange the products of their fields
for the iron lances and axes made by the
natives of Uvira. These visits are very
brief. Then they visit the mission
stations to get cloth in exchange for the
provisions they bring. They always
reach the stations at nightfall, and as
soon as their business is transacted they
at once retrace their steps to their
mountain homes. They have grown to
have confidence in the missionaries, and
their chiefs have at last consented to re-
ceive white men ON their mountains
who go there to buy food.
1t must not be thought that the Wa
Bembe take pleasure in thus isolating
themselves from the world around them.
They keep all men at arms length be-
cause they know the misery that the
Arab slave dealers have inflicted upon
scores of helpless villages. They are
determined to die rather than be en-
slaved, and in their mountain Businesses
they are able, through their bravery and
superior position, to keep themselves
free and independent. They bitterly
hate all Mohammedans, and want all
persons of that faith O. les thoI,l aororo-
ly alone. Their self-imposed restraints
are CALLING nevertheless, and they would
like to be able to move more freely
around the country.
A little while ago one of the chiefs
visited Father Jossets mission station.
''We would like said he, ''to be the
children of the white. The situation in
which we live IS very unpleasant. We
are obliged to till our fields with the hoe
in one hand and the spear in the other.
If the whites would only induce the
Arabs and their native friends to let Us
alone the present situation would
cease We would then work in our
fields without fear, and we would gladly
supply our white friends and their child
rem with food We would bring you,
not as to-day, little bundles of food
that children can carry, but big loads
under whose weight even men would
fall
The missionaries told the chief that
they looked upon the Wa-Bembe as
their children, and that they would at
the first opportunity intercede with the
hrabs in their behalf. 1t is to be fear
ed that they will not be able to make
much impression upon the cruel slave
drivers, who kill without mercy all the
natives who oppose their crimes.
Father Josset says the Wa-Bembe are
a numerous people, and the mountains
where they dwell fs..rl ly swarm with hu-
man beings. A native whom the mis-
sionaries sent to the mountain home of
this people returned with the statement
that men were as thick on the mountain
slopes as blades of grass on the plain,
and that some of their villages along
the ridges were three miles in length.
Here is tribe that at one of the very
head fountains of the Arab slave trade
have maintained the spirit of freemen.
They have kept arms in their hands, de-
ternined to resist to the bitter end all
attempts to reduce them to bondage.
Their courage and the natural strong
holds which they defend have made
them formidable, and in the pure air of
their mountain homes they are multiply
ing and strengthening, while the tribes
around tIam, blighted by the Arab in
yasion, are wasting away.